The people of  Salcete and Mormugao have expressed concern that the  celebrations of festivals of  Easter and  Holi would be affected  due to the restricted water supply  in the next two days following the high  manganese  content found in the water of Salaulim dam on Thursday.

 

The  PWD  has  restricted  water supply in order to  clean up  the water filters at the  dam to  flush out the  manganese found  beyond the permissible limit. 

However, the engineers said that  they would take care to overcome the problem soon.

“Today, things are improving. The manganese content came down at 10 a.m. on Friday to  1.3 from 1.5.  We are controlling the situation. Hourly monitoring and testing of water for  manganese  will be done at the dam,’’ stated, Mr S R Paranjape, executive engineer, public works division XII.

Mr Paranjape further said that  with the  manganese content in Salaulim dam water, perhaps for the first time in this season, the filtration has slowed downed and  as a result, the production has came down to 180/181 MLD from 192  MLD.  He said that all efforts are being taken to normalise the situation.

“Till the  manganese  content comes down to a permissible  limit, the water has to be  judiciously  distributed so that the people are not affected,’’ he said. 

He stated that his division only looks after the  production, whereas the  distribution of the water is being done to the South  Goa people by  works division  IX and XX.   The  executive  engineer of  works division  IX, Mr  P Fatarpekar,  however, promised  to  distribute the water 

equally.

“We will  take care to  distribute the water  equally to all.  We will see that people of  Salcete and  Mormugao will not be affected,’’ he  stated while speaking to this on Friday. Mr Fatarpekar is taking care of  these two talukas – Salcete and  Mormugao.

The  Salcete  taluka is  supplied  around  75  MLD water even though the  requirement is 10  MLD more. The Mormugao taluka  requires 65 MLD of water.  

“At the most  water will be  restricted for  two hours. We will adjust it  in such a way that people of  Salcete and  Mormugao would not feel that  water was  restricted to them.  Areas at  higher levels will be  taken into  account while distributing the water,’’ added Mr  Fatarpekar. [NT]